VLOGA NACIONALNIH OPERNIH GLEDALIŠČ V 20. IN 21. … · gli slavi del sud nel teatro e nella musica dell’Ottocento in Italia/Morlakizem, iliri-zem, ekosotična zamotanost. Lik

UR. JERNEJ WEISS

VLOGA NACIONALNIH OPERNIH GLEDALIŠČ V 20. IN 21. STOLETJU

THE ROLE OF NATIONAL OPERA HOUSES IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURIES

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studia musicologica labacensia issn 2536-2445

studia musicologica

labacensia

Izid monografije so podprli

ur. Jernej Weiss

vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletjuthe role of national opera houses in the 20th and 21st centuries

2019

Znanstvena monografija z mednarodno udeležboVloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju – The Role of National Opera Houses in the 20th and 21st CenturiesUredil Jernej Weiss

Studia musicologica Labacensia, 3 (ISSN 2536-2445)Glavni urednik ■ Jernej Weiss (Ljubljana/Maribor)Odgovorni urednik ■ Jonatan Vinkler (Koper)Tehnična urednica ■ Tjaša Ribizel (Ljubljana)Uredniški odbor ■ Matjaž Barbo (Ljubljana), Primož Kuret (Ljubljana), Helmut Loos (Leipzig), Lubomír Spurný (Brno), John Tyrrell († Cardiff), Michael Walter (Graz), Jernej Weiss (Ljubljana/Maribor)

Recenzenti ■ Lubomír Spurný, Ivan Florjanc, Igor Grdina

Oblikovanje in prelom ■ Jonatan Vinkler

Prevod ■ Amidas d. o. o.Jezikovni pregled (slovensko besedilo) ■ Jernej Weiss

Izdali in založiliZaložba Univerze na Primorskem (zanjo: prof. dr. Dragan Marušič, rektor)Titov trg 4, SI-6000 KoperGlavni urednik ■ Jonatan VinklerVodja založbe ■ Alen JežovnikFestival Ljubljana (zanj: Darko Brlek, direktor)Trg francoske revolucije 1, SI-1000 Ljubljana

Koper, Ljubljana 2019

ISBN 978-961-7055-50-4 (spletna izdaja: pdf)http://www.hippocampus.si/ISBN/978-961-7055-50-4.pdfISBN 978-961-7055-51-1 (spletna izdaja: html)http://www.hippocampus.si/ISBN/978-961-7055-51-1/index.htmlISBN 978-961-7055-52-8 (tiskana izdaja)Naklada tiskane izdaje: 200 izvodov (tiskovina ni namenjena prodaji)DOI: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-7055-50-4

© 2019 Festival Ljubljana

Kataložni zapis o publikaciji (CIP) pripravili v Narodni in univerzitetni knjižnici v LjubljaniCOBISS.SI-ID=298791680ISBN 978-961-7055-50-4 (pdf)ISBN 978-961-7055-51-1 (html)

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Jernej Weiss9 The Role of National Opera Houses in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Jernej Weiss13 Vloga nacionalnih opernih gledališč v 20. in 21. stoletju

Susanne Kogler17 Neue Musik auf österreichischen Bühnen:

Kritische Anmerkungen zum aktuellen Repertoire

Helmut Loos57 Tempel und Kathedralen für die ernste und heilige Musik.

Opern- und Konzerthäuser und ihre Ikonographie

Hartmut Krones69 Die Wiener Volksoper als „nationale Spielstätte“

Wolfgang Marx91 Opera in Ireland – A Continuing Struggle for Acceptance

Lauma Mellēna-Bartkeviča117 Opera and national culture in Latvia: the centenary balance

Florinela Popa129 On the Romanian Opera, Bucharest: One Author, Two Views

Luba Kijanovska143 Oper als Markt: Opernaufführung als Marketing-Trick

Vsebina

v loga naciona l n i h oper n i h gl eda l išč v 20. i n 21 . stol et j u

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Vladimir Gurevich155 Das Mariinski-Theater – zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft

– das 21. Jahrhundert

Vita Gruodytė163 Opera without Theatre

Jacques Amblard173 “Spectacular” challenges of opera in the 21st century

Lenka Křupková, Jiří Kopecký183 Das Olmützer Provinztheater und seine Beziehung zu Marburg

und Laibach. Das Olmützer Operntheater als Modell zur Herausbildung eines nationalen Theaters im Rahmen der Österreichischen Monarchie

Cristina Scuderi201 Teatri d’oltremare: Impresari und ihr Beziehungsnetz

an der ostadriatische Küste um die Jahrhundertwende

Ivano Cavallini219 The Italian “National Opera” Imagined from a Southern Slavic

Viewpoint: Franjo Ks. Kuhač and Josip Mandić

Biljana Milanović231 Opera Productions of the Belgrade National Theatre at the Beginning

of the 20th Century Between Political Rivalry and Contested Cultural Strategies

Nada Bezić253 Ljubljanska in zagrebška Opera med drugo svetovno vojno

– primerjava

Aleš Gabrič277 Ustanovitev Opere Narodnega gledališča v Ljubljani

v sklopu izgradnje osrednjih narodnih kulturnih ustanov

Jernej Weiss291 Václav Talich at the Slovene Provincial Theatre in Ljubljana

Primož Kuret303 Sezona Fritza Reinerja v Ljubljani (1911–12)

Matjaž Barbo313 Operna »vožnja domov« Emila Hochreiterja

Darja Koter333 Ciril Debevec – the first professional opera director in Slovenia

vsebi na

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Gregor Pompe351 Repertoarna analiza ljubljanskega opernega uprizarjanja

od ustanovitve Dramatičnega društva do danes

Niall O’Loughlin373 The European Musical Context of the Operas of Slavko Osterc

Tjaša Ribizel395 The Reception of the Ljubljana Opera House Repertoire by Critics

in Slovenian Daily Newspapers from the end of the World-War II to the 1960s

Tomaž Svete405 Pota in stranpota sodobne slovenske operne ustvarjalnosti

413 Povzetki

433 Summaries

455 Avtorji

465 Contributors

475 Imensko kazalo/Index

doi: https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-7055-50-4.219-230

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Social and cultural frameThe year 1848 was one of revolutions known as “the spring of nations”. In Trieste it was preceded by a wide spread of Southern Slavic cultures via the periodical La Favilla. On behalf of the democratic policy of the editors, who openly sided with Giuseppe Mazzini, Count Medo Pucić and August Kaznačić, both from Dubrovnik and students in Padua, were requested to edit fourteen articles on the history of the Slavs from Russia to the Eastern coast of the Adriatic sea.1 As a storm the national awakening involved Tri-este and the Slovenian middle class, that in turn was supported by a learned group of Czechs employed in many trading sectors, and appreciated as ex-traordinary musicians.2 The three major ethnic groups of the city, Slovenes (together with Croats), Germans and Italians, founded some cultural and 1 See Ivano Cavallini, “Morlacchismo, illirismo, involuzioni esotiche. L’immagine de-

gli slavi del sud nel teatro e nella musica dell’Ottocento in Italia/Morlakizem, iliri-zem, ekosotična zamotanost. Lik južnega slovana v italijanskem gledališču in gla-sbi devetnajstega stoletja”, in Umetnosti izraz ob nacionalnem vprašanju. Glasba, likovna in besedna umetnost ob slovensko-italijanski meji v drugi polovici XIX. sto-letja do prihoda fašizma/L’espressione artistica e la questione nazionale. La musica, le arti figurative e le lettere nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento al confine italo-slove-no fino all’avvento del fascismo, ed. Aleksander Rojc (Trst-Ljubljana: Glasbena Mati-ca-SAZU, 2014), 375–82, 406–13.

2 Aleksander Rojc, Cultura musicale degli sloveni a Trieste: dal 1848 all’avvento del fas-cismo (Trieste: Editoriale Stampa Triestina, 1978), passim; Ivano Cavallini, “Music Migrations from the Bohemian Lands to Trieste and the National Awakening of the Southern Slavs,” in Music Migration in the Early Modern Age: Centres, Peripheries –

The Italian “National Opera” Imagined from a Southern Slavic Viewpoint: Franjo Ks. Kuhač and Josip MandićIvano CavalliniUniverza v PalermoUniversity of Palermo


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musical associations working in quasi-pacific competition.3 The territori-al unity of both Italy and Germany, which became independent states re-spectively in 1861 and in 1871, contributed to the political clash among these national groups. The changing of the political environment undermined the attempts to create a collaboration in view of a renewal of the Haps-burg policy, which in turn pursued a pragmatic perspective known as di-vide et impera (i.e., sometimes in favour of the Slovenes and Croats, some-times in favour of the Italians). However, irredentism, Pan-Slavism, and German nationalism did not exert a negative influence on the musical life of the town. It flourished in a very strange mixture of Wagnerism, Italian bel canto, and, foremost on the shared feeling for Hausmusik, i.e., the prac-tice of performing chamber music imported from eighteenth-century Aus-tria, which became a distinctive habit of local culture.

Kuhač, Mandić and the fin de siècle Italian Opera The aim of my contribution is to give a short survey of the criticisms of Ital-ian opera and Wagnerian Musikdrama, written in the light of the Southern Slavic revival of both Croatian musicologist Franjo Kuhač (1834–1911) and composer Josip Mandić (1883–1959). The negative judgement of Kuhač on the final works of Verdi, and the opposite appreciation of Mascagni’s Cav-alleria rusticana, are due to his ideological trust in folk music, as the main source for creating a national grammar of opera. Mandić, as a lawyer and musician who worked within the frame of the Slovenian and Pan-Slavic re-vival in Trieste until World War I, collaborated with the newspaper Jadran (The Adriatic), printed for the Croatian inhabitants of Trieste and Istria.4 In 1903 he published a long article on Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca and Alber-to Franchetti’s Germania.5 In such a context, the composer was attracted by the “neoromantic style” of Italian opera using a different approach than that of Kuhač. He did not want to retrace the authenticity of popular style

People, Works, Styles, Paths of Dissemination and Influence, ed. Jolanta Guzy-Pasiak and Aneta Markuszewska (Warsaw: Liber pro Arte, 2016), 323–35.

3 Giuseppe Radole, Ricerche sulla vita musicale a Trieste (1750-1950) (Trieste, Svevo, 1988), passim. Idem, Le scuole musicali a Trieste e il Conservatorio Giuseppe Tartini (Trieste: Svevo, 1992), 106–07.

4 The weekly newspaper appeared in Trieste for a short time, from 1903 to 1904. Cf. Fedora Ferluga Petronio, “Il settimale Jadran di Ante Trešić-Pavičić,” ed. Gian Car-lo Damir Murković, I croati a Trieste (Trieste: Comunità Croata/Hrvatska Zajedni-ca, 2007), 275–84.

5 Josip Mandić, “Glazba: nekoliko refleksija,” Jadran 3–5 (1903).

t h e ita l i a n “nat iona l oper a” i m agi n ed from a sou t h er n sl av ic v i e w poi n t

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in the Verismo, but unlike Kuhač he refused any comparison between Ital-ian and Slavic opera, this last one considered as a national product that should have never been affected by Italian or German patterns.

Given that Kuhač’s biography, né Franz Xaver Koch of a German fami-ly, is well known, I would like to outline some crucial aspects of his thought on folk songs as a source for opera.6

During the 1850s and 1860s, the musicologist could undertake some journeys throughout the South Eastern part of Europe, with the task of gathering folk music. The final result of this incredible effort was the publi-cation, from 1878 to 1881, of his collection in four volumes of 1,600 tunes un-der the title Južno-Slovjenske narodne popievke (Southern Slav Folksongs). His first approach to ethnicity in music produced an ambiguous mean-ing of the term “narodna glazba”, referring to both the traditional and art music based on folk. In his writings the floating meaning of ethnic mu-sic seems to be the outcome of a series of political changes that occurred in Croatia and among the Southern Slavs.7 This may explain why at the begin-ning of his career he was inclined to Pan-Slavism, while later he was near to the South-Slavic or Yugoslav ethnicity, and finally, at the end of his life, to Croatian nationalism. As a young musicologist, he converted himself from German to Croatian nationality, and embraced the radical Pan-Slavic idea against the pro-German policy. From the 1860s to the 1870s, he turned his attention to the South-Slavic brotherhood. In that period, he was close to Nicolò de Strmić from Zadar, an Italian-oriented nobleman who com-posed La madre slava (The Slav Mother, 1865).8 This opera was staged in Tri-este and Zagreb, and it includes two famous Illyrian anthems Još Hrvats-ka ni propala, Croatia Has Not Yet Fallen, text by Ljudevit Gaj set to music by Ferdo Livadić in 1833, and Mi smo braćo ilirskog, We are Brothers of Illy-ria, by the priest Mijo Hajko. After the Italian opera La madre slava, Ku-hač hoped in vain that Strmić had written a Yugoslav national opera, based on the authentic Southern Slavic folklore, as he wrote in a letter addressed 6 See the proceedings Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (1834-1911). Glazbena historiografija i iden-

titet/Franjo Ksaver Kuhač (1834-1911). Musical Historiography and Identity, ed. Vjera Katalinić and Stanislav Tuksar (Zagreb: Croatian Musicological Society, 2013).

7 Stanislav Tuksar, “‘Die Geburt der Musik aus dem Geiste des Volkes’: The Construc-tion of the Idea of National Music in Franjo Ksaver Kuhač’s (1834–1911) Historiogra-phy - Slavic vs. German vs. Italian,” Musica e Storia 12, no. 3 (2004): 563–90.

8 Caterina Brugnera, “La madre slava di Nikola Strmić: un tentativo di incontro tra il-lirismo e opera italiana,” Musica e Storia 12, no. 3 (2004): 591–610.


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to the composer of Zadar.9 This unrealised goal convinced him that “the moral forces of each of the tribes are too small to make us believe in the possibility of a singular Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian or Bulgarian nation-al music”.10 This wide viewpoint is also retraceable in his monograph on the musicians at the time of Illyrism in Croatia, from 1835 to 1850 (Ilirski glaz-benici. Prilozi za poviest Hrvatskoga preporoda/Illyrian Musicians. A Con-tribution to the History of the Croatian Revival, 1893).11 The personalities Kuhač listed among Illyrians are selected by ideological and not nation-al criteria. Among the eighteen musicians quoted, there are two Austrians, two Hungarians, two Czechs, one Slovene, one Serb, and ten Croats.

Apart from the operatic trilogy of Ivan Zajc (1870–1876), a useful ex-ample to understand the national idea in Croatia after the end of Alexander Bach’s absolutism is the article “Nova glazbena struja njemačka i sadašnji talijanski kompozitori” (New Musical Trends in Germany and Contempo-rary Italian Composers).12 The short essay, printed in 1892, helps us to rec-ognise not only Kuhač’s personal taste, but also his love for art music in-spired by folk songs, whatever the nation! He analyses in detail the reasons why German culture was not able to recover its own folk music, and the slow process of Slavic nations’ freedom in Central Europe. Dominated by the German music school, Bohemia, Slovenia and Croatia reacted to this influence tracing the paths of their own folk music and national/regional poems. The case of Italy represents for Kuhač an extraordinary experience of cultural unity of the nation. He believes that art and folk music coex-ist in Italian opera. In this respect, he writes in praise of Mascagni’s real-ism refusing Verdi’s conversion to Wagnerism in his last operas. Although these remarks confirm that he was a clever scholar, in his analysis there is a strange interpretation, concerning the relationship between Verdi and the Italian folk legacy, which will last for a very long time. According to Kuhač, 9 “Ja sam uvjeren da će te Vi koli na našu slavjansku glazbu, toli na hrvatski jezik i u

buduće svu pozornost obratiti, je bi želiti bilo da genialni skladatelj La madre slava i u ove prodre, da se za Jugoslavenstvo viečne zasluge stekne”. This sentence is read-able in a letter signed by Kuhač on 25 February 1870, now readable in Zdravko Blaže-ković, “Prilog biografiji Nikole Strmića,” (A Contribution to the Biography of Niko-la Strmić), Rad JAZU 409 (1988): 299–300.

10 Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, “Sachliche Einleitung zur der Sammlung südslavischer Volks-lieder,” Agramer Zeitung 48 (1873): 194–202.

11 Idem, Ilirski glazbenici. Prilozi za povijest hrvatskoga preporoda (Illyrian Musicians. Contributions to the History of Croatian Awakening) (Zagreb: Matica Hrvatska, 1893).

12 Possibly printed in Zagreb, unfortunately without a publishing house.


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Verdi was better than other composers in representing national music un-til he fell into the Wagnerian school network. Following this premise, the authentic folk source survived in the opera Cavalleria rusticana, regarded by Kuhač as a renewed supra-national tradition. This was a longtime mis-understanding of the image of Italy, given that the large spread of arias, ro-manze, or choral music drawn from operas are not comparable to the folk-songs of some Italian regions, where peasants, living away from the towns, had very conservative traditions unrelated to opera.

Verdi, the genial and extraordinary prolific Italian composer, re-garding the musical context of twenty years before, represented the symbol of the Italian people. Not only did he compose in a true Ital-ian spirit, he also improved the Italian music art tradition. […] Af-ter the appearance of Wagner, this lucky artist betrayed his peo-ple in such an unforeseen manner […]. He rejected music for which Italians were the rulers, clergy, aristocrats, scholars, rich men and audience […] and then he became a servant of Wagner. Mascag-ni’s Cavalleria rusticana achieved an outstanding success due to the following causes: Mascagni did not become a slave of Wagner or of his followers, and then he did not disguise his Italianness; he was able to use all new achievements of musical progress, and he coined a musical phraseology by means of selected ideas. Mascagni did not imitate the infinite melody, whose parts, each other, do not correspond either to the melody or to the rhythm. Further, he did not adopt the modulation of extreme Wagnerian followers.13

Compelling evidence occurs in the analysis of harmonies related to some scenes of Cavalleria. In contrast, it is astonishing the prejudice Kuhač felt for some nations he considered unable to preserve their own folk music. This is the case of Germany, Great Britain, and some peoples like the Gyp-sies, and the Jews:

The peoples in Europe having an authentic traditional music […] are the Slavic, Italian, French, Spanish, Hungarian and Turkish. German, British, Jew and Gypsy peoples have not traditional music […]. German folk melodies are not created in the spirit of Germa-ny […]. When the Germans talk about a German school, instead of

13 Kuhač, “Nova glazbena struja njemačka i sadašnji talijanski kompozitori,” 20.


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talking about folk music, they are not wrong, because all their mu-sic is the fruit of professional musicians […].14

Josip Mandić and Pan-Slavism in TriesteKuhač was in Trieste for a series of reports printed in 1892 by the periodi-cal Vijenac.15 Even if he visited most part of the Hapsburg Empire and the Balkan lands, he came to Trieste with the charge of describing the nation-al exhibition of art and crafts of the Austrian empire, and settled in the free port of Austria. In particular, he was interested in writing on the Slavic re-gional pavilions, and on the Croatian firms. Different was the case of Jo-sip Mandić. He was born in Trieste in a bourgeois family of inner Istria. After attending a primary German school in his native town, he moved to Sušak and Zagreb for high school, and finally he graduated in Vienna, where his studies included composition under the guidance of Hermann Grädner and Robert Fuchs. Before living in Prague, he worked in Trieste as a lawyer until World War I. Following in the footsteps of his father and un-cle Matko, he was politically engaged in upholding the interests of Slovenes and Croats. His opera Petar Svačić was played in a concert held by the soci-ety Dalmatinski skup at the Rossetti Theatre in Trieste (1903). The Dalma-tian Society was founded by the Croats of Trieste, whose activities were also supported by Slovenes and Serbs in a common effort to oppose German and Italian cultural domination. Reports on the concert in the Croatian and Slovenian newspapers of Trieste welcomed the event as a sign of the growing cultural and economic power of these communities. Also, the Ital-ian and German newspapers wrote positively about the concert, praising the composer’s promising talent.16 Petar Svačić could not be staged in Za-greb, since the Hungarian governor of Croatia, Károly Khuen-Héderváry, abolished opera performances from 1902 up to 1909. Instead of Zagreb, Pe-14 Kuhač, “Nova glazbena struja njemačka i sadašnji talijanski kompozitori,” 7.15 Franjo Ksaver Kuhač, “Trsćanska izložba,” Vijenac 14, no 36 (1882): 583, no 37: 590–

3, no 38: 612–15.16 The reviews published by Edinost, “Koncert Dalmatinskega skupa”, Trieste, “La fes-

ta del Club Dalmatino”, and once again by Edinost, “O koncertu Dalmatinskega sku-pa” (the latter is a translation of the article published in Triester Zeitung) are record-ed in Natka Badurina, “Teatro e politica ai margini dell’impero: l’opera lirica Petar Svačić nel 1903,” I croati a Trieste, 386–7.


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tar Svačić was staged in Ljubljana on 15th January 1904, where the response of the public was enthusiastic.17

The project of Mandić and his librettist Karlo Lukež was very unusu-al in the frame of that time. They chose the Croatian theme of Petar Svačić, but they arranged it to promote the idea of the union of all Southern Slavs. Although the topic did not permit it, there are many references. The Pro-logue is written in decasyllables simulating the folk epics. It was sung by a baritone dressed as a gusle player, and, according to the newspapers of the time, the music was heavy and monotonous, recalling the genre of blind guslar’s poems. The verses of the libretto also contain lexical and stylistic el-ements of the common Croatian and Serbian folk heritage.

The feature of the opera can be understood only within the peripher-al and multicultural frame of Trieste, where the two young authors were colleagues on the editorial board of the journal Jadran. Since its owner, Ante Tresić Pavičić, was a staunch advocate of the Croatian Party of Rights, this periodical was launched with the intention of supporting radical Cro-atian policy. However, the multi-national competition for the cultural and economic power in Trieste, and the Slavic communities’ need to oppose the much stronger German and Italian influences, induced Tresić Pavičić to side with the heritage of the Illyrian idea. For the same reason the two young authors re-elaborated the Croatian pathos, that was implicit in the plot of Petar Svačić, and recycled it in favour of the Yugoslav ideology.

In 1903 Mandić published in Jadran the aforementioned article enti-tled “Glazba nekoliko refeklesija” (“Music: Some Reflexions”), which is use-ful to establish a new viewpoint on the reform of Italian opera.18 At first glance, his writing seems conceived in the light of a neo-national awaken-ing of the South Slavic people, and the related effort in re-thinking the com-positional grammar after both the Illyrian amateur Vatroslav Lisinski and the professional Ivan Zajc ― the last one renewed the musical life of Zagreb from 1870 up to his retirement in 1908. In fact, any comparison to the na-tional trends of Slavic composers is omitted, because the author links his aesthetic thought to the analysis of modern Italian opera.

The article consists of three issues: the Zeitgeist, Wagner, and the Ital-ian modern opera on the traces of Wagner’s compositional technique. 17 See the article of Edinost, “Triumf mladega hrvatskega skladatelja J. Mandića v Lju-

bljani,” quoted by Natka Badurina. “Croatian Historical Myth, South-Slavic Broth-erhood and the Death of the Opera,” De Musica Disserenda 12, no 1 (2016): 82.

18 See footnote 5.


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In the epigraph Mandić quotes a sentence of Robert Schumann, and the writing begins with a second short sentence of the same composer, “Al-len neuen Erscheinungen ist Geist eigen”, drawn from Aus Meisters Raro’s, Florestan’s und Eusebius’ Denk- und Dicht-Büchlein.19 The twenty-year old Mandić affirms his Romantic credo on music as a special language, suita-ble in translating the thought. At the same time, he refers to the Hegelian concept of the spirit of the time, which is the result of a dialectical clash be-tween two different forces (Phänomenologie des Geistes, 1807). He argues that the evolution of music is the result of a process of a clash, which provokes a purification, readable as a discovery of a new style. The peculiarity of a work of art depends either on the Zeitgeist or on the spirit of the compos-er. How do we explain in detail what happened in music history? As Man-dić affirms, as sons of their time neither Haydn nor Wagner could write in the Haydnian or Wagnerian manners. Although they are links with his own time, inside the composer there are the seeds of a creative instinct, par excellence, or κατ’ ἐξοχήν, as the author writes in ancient Greek. From this viewpoint it is evident there is a conflict between two basic elements: on the one hand the spirit of the time, translatable as the rules established as a common style and expression of musical language, on the other hand the intuition of the artist (“the spirit exists from the beginning; it works inside the composer looking for patterns in the world outside him. However, it de-velops patterns according to the composer’s personal insight and force”).

A second important sentence in Mandić’s article regards the career of an artist, which could be separate on two levels:

During his youth, when his imagination is still weak, until he needs more knowledge (nobody can learn by himself without models). This will be the time of comparison between his spirit and the mu-sic literature. After the conclusion of this period, the two factors change their proportions. After the separation from the patterns, he is ready to create something bigger, or at least he is able to de-tach and bring out his individuality. […] To individualise the work means getting a great opportunity. […] [In contrast] the untalented composer will follow the mainstream of his time.

The compromise between rules and individuality established by Man-dić is very close to the eclectic approach to the biographies of great com-19 Gesammelte Schriften über Musik und Musiker von Robert Schumann (Leipzig: Ge-

org Wigand, 1854).


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posers from a positivist perspective. As an example, in his monograph on Wagner (1890), the prominent Italian musicologist Luigi Torchi analyses the history of culture in Germany before and after Wagner’s dramas.20 Nev-ertheless, he avoids the discourse on the feeling of the maestro that remains inscrutable. That is to say, musicology can only examine how a maestro writes an opera, i.e., describing its shape and style. Vice versa, if the mis-sion of the scholar is to detect the composer’s feeling, any answer would be wrong.

After this assumption, Mandić emphasises the decadence of Western European culture. Even though he neglects any mention of the role of mu-sic within the national trend of Central Europe, I suppose he refers to it. His penchant for a renewal of Croatian opera, by means of the Wagneri-an orchestration, is witnessed by Slovenian critics after the staging of Pe-tar Svačić in Ljubljana. Unfortunately, the lack of a score of the opera does not allow complete feedback on Mandić’s attitude. His adverse opinion on Puccini’s Tosca, staged at the Teatro Verdi of Trieste, is due to a quick dis-semination of Wagner’s Musikdrama. Like a whirlwind that cleans the air, but blows so hard that it tears down the roofs, his music influenced the so-called neo-romantic Italian school. The result is, as Mandić says, “a contin-uous effort to insert the unpredictability and the bizarre”, so that “unusual harmonies, prevailing alterations, recurrent changes of rhythm, gruelling orchestration are the main characteristics of the modern school. This ‘the-atricality’ is the most important goal. […] What is impossible in music is re-stored through external requirements”. In this regard he quotes the exotic opera Iris of Pietro Mascagni and Tosca of Giacomo Puccini.

Mandić considers Tosca by the dramatist Victorien Sardou an unsuita-ble source to set to music. He loves the lyrical flair of Puccini, which cannot be arisen in a drama based on murder, revenge and suicide. Tosca is a dra-ma of blood, intertwined with an increase of theatrical effects that do not meet expectations. Compared to the delicate and touching Bohème, Tosca could not reach the peak of the former opera. As remembered by Mandić, Tosca was a fiasco in Trieste and at the same time a success in Monte Car-lo. This incoherence is due to a group of music critics of the Adriatic city. They were strong followers of Wagner, but also unprofessional writers una-ble to accept the innovative language of Puccini, whose leitmotif technique stems from Wagnerian drama. Maybe the young Croatian intellectual also sensed that the multicultural audience of Trieste, at the crucial moment of 20 Luigi Torchi, Richard Wagner: studio critico (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1890): 8–11.


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nationalism, was more conservative rather than the learned audience of Vi-enna. Puccini was not a follower of Verismo, but an international author, as written by the extreme nationalist Fausto Torrefranca in his provocative biography Giacomo Puccini e l’opera internazionale (1912).21 The fate of the Empire’s periphery, influenced by chauvinism, was the research of identi-ty in a simple way. The diminished presence of the romanza style of Tosca in comparison to Bohème, that sounded like a model in the vein of the tra-ditional opera by numbers, was perhaps unacceptable for any kind of audi-ence: either for the Italians, or for the Slovenes and Germans, all agreeing that Tosca was an anaemic opera. Nevertheless, it is not easy to understand the thinking of a young intellectual dealing with the legacy of Hegel, Schu-mann and Wagner, but not of Eduard Hanslick. Unlike other intellectu-als, the young Mandić was not influenced by the theory of Hanslick. In the Austrian lands and abroad, only faint traces survived of his provoca-tive formalism, which was overcome by positivist scholars, or refused by the followers of Hegel’s philosophy,22 even if in Bologna Luigi Torchi trans-lated into Italian the famous Vom Musikalisch-Schöne in 1883, and the lit-erate Silvio Benco from Trieste wrote an article in memory of Hanslick af-ter his death (1904).23 This trend reveals that not everyone was against him, and Mandić, although fascinated by the late Romantic aesthetics, exam-ined the dramaturgy and the technique of Tosca with accuracy, avoiding, in such a manner, the suggestions of sound sentiment. Within this frame, he not only defines the causes of the end of opera by numbers, but also the fall of Tosca, attaching to Puccini the bad choice of a bizarre libretto, that led him to give up his own intimate style of romanza, flourished in a brilliant way in the previous operas. Although the reliance on the topic of Slavic na-tional myth, readable in the libretto of the contemporary Petar Svačić, the review written by Mandić is free from ideological bias close to Pan-Slavic or Croatian nationalism. This is the reason why we could affirm, as Michel de Montaigne wrote in his Essays (III, 13), “il y a plus affaire à interpreter 21 Printed in Turin by Bocca, the publishing house of the periodical Rivista Musicale

Italiana.22 Barbara Boisits, “Der Geist des musikalisch Schönen. Ferdinand Peter Graf Lau-

rencins hegelianische Kritik an Eduard Hanslicks Formauffassung,” in Musicologie sans frontières/Muzikologija bez granica/Musicology without Frontiers. Svečani zbor-nik za Stanislava Tuksara/Essays in Honour of Stanilav Tuksar, ed. Ivano Cavallini and Harry White (Zagreb: Croatian Musicological Society, 2010), 205–22.

23 Silvio Benco, “Hanslick e la sua sorte,” Piccolo della sera, 21 08 1904, reprint in Scrit-ti musicali di Silvio Benco, ed. Gianni Gori and Isabella Gallo, introductory word by Gianandrea Gavazzeni (Napoli: Ricciardi, 1974): 114–17.


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les interpretations qu’à interpreter les choses et plus livres sur les livres que sur autre sujet”.

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VLOGA NACIONALNIH OPERNIH GLEDALIŠČ V 20. IN 21. … · gli slavi del sud nel teatro e nella musica dell’Ottocento in Italia/Morlakizem, iliri-zem, ekosotična zamotanost. Lik